1. Field of the Invention
This particular invention generally pertains to the assembling of jewelry type products or the like. More specifically, it is directed to a novel and improved method and apparatus for automatically and continuously assembling joinable ring shanks and ring settings into a corresponding unitary jewelry type ring wherein the ring shank is bonded to the ring setting.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It has been long known how to manufacture jewelry type rings. Heretofore in the jewelry making industry and, in particular, the jewelry ring field, such rings have been traditionally manually constructed. While such a manual process may prove successful for a limited quantity of rings it does not, on the other hand, prove economical for large quantities. Besides the inability of producing large quantities of rings economically, the manual approach suffers from other significant drawbacks. One conventional shortcoming is the fact that manually produced rings generally lack a uniformity in the construction resulting from the assembling process as a result of the nature of a manual process. It should be understood that consistency in the assembling process varies from worker to worker. Accordingly, uniformity of the finished product cannot be maintained, especially over a prolonged production period. Other significant disadvantages result from the fact that the currently employed manual techniques are labor consuming and time consuming not to mention relatively expensive.
In general, known techniques fail to provide an automatic and continuous method and apparatus for testing for ring shank alignment on a corresponding ring setting and then selectively bonding the shank to the setting in response to a shank being properly aligned with the setting.
Moreover, known prior art techniques fail to provide either a method or apparatus which can automatically and continuously place and align the ring shanks to the ring settings in a fashion which satisfactorily permits such to be done in production line work.
Further, known techniques also fail to provide either a highly satisfactory method or apparatus whereby there is a continuous and automatic testing for the presence and accurate alignment of various sized ring shanks to corresponding ring settings is followed by selectively bonding those ring shanks and settings which have been found to be properly aligned.
Additionally, other common approaches which have in general been undertaken for assembling jewelry ring components fail to provide simple and reliable techniques for continuously and automatically applying bonding agent material to selected portions of the ring shanks or ring settings prior to joining and bonding of the shanks and settings.
In addition, known prior art methods for assembling ring shanks to corresponding ring settings, do not continuously and selectively mechanically test the joints of the bonded ring by applying tensile forces to such bonded joints to determine the bond strength, or for that matter, automatically and selectively remove the successfully tensile tested ring shanks and settings and selectively eject the unsuccessful bonded ring shanks and settings.
It will be appreciated from a consideration of the foregoing that mechanisms and methods do not presently exist which automatically, continuously and selectively place and releasably hold ring shanks to corresponding ring settings, apply bonding agent material to the shanks and/or settings, test for the presence and correct alignment of ring settings and shanks, bond the shanks and settings together, test the bonded ring shanks and settings, remove the satisfactorily bonded shanks and settings, and reject the unsuccessfully bonded shanks and settings.